yucca

Meaning

Noun

• Any of several evergreen plants of the genus Yucca, having long, pointed, and rigid leaves at the top of a woody stem, and bearing a large panicle of showy white blossoms.
• The yuca (cassava).

Related

Narrower meaning words

• Adam's needle
• Joshua tree

Origin

• Variant of yuca, from Galibi Carib yuca ("cassava (Manihot esculenta)"). The word was applied to plants of the genus Yucca (now the main sense), because Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and others confused them with the cassava.